On Vernon Davis and other matters of receiving

Provocative posts, very provocative posts, I’m starting to like this job all the more. As it concerns Vernon Davis, he’s not lazy. He’s an extremely hard worker on the field but he does have an arrogance to him that makes it difficult for him to admit vulnerabilities, and learning the offense is a weakness of his.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some sort of learning disability. Jonathan Mooney, a severe dyslexic who eventually graduated from Brown University with an honors degree in English and earned a Truman fellowship in the field of learning disabilities and special education, said that 40 percent of NBA players have a learning difference. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same percentage applies in the NFL. Also, schemes in football are more complex than basketball.

Also, other than quarterback and center, tight end is hardest offensive position to learn. Tight ends must know blocking schemes and pass patterns. Most of the patterns for a defense involve adjusting the route depending on the coverage. Also, the tight end motions more than any other position, and as one post noted, Davis has often been flagged for illegal procedure.

“The tight ends have to put in extra time,” Delanie Walker said towards the end of last year. “Because we do have more stuff on our plate. We do motion, we do have read routes, if they blitz, we have a hot route. We got to pick up the blitzes. It is very difficult.”

Walker came on at the end of the year after he learned not only the offense, but the defense.

“You have to know what the defensive front is, you got to know where the safety is,” Walker said. “It was a learning process for me.”

Davis is obviously behind in that learning process. If and when he catches up everything will get better for him, he’ll run his patterns more crisply and his hands will improve because he can concentrate on the pass rather than thinking about where he’s supposed to be.

If I had to grade him as an overall 6th pick, he’d be in the C range. His blocking is far better than the 49ers expected and his work ethic is excellent. As they say, there’s still a lot out there for him.

DRAFT PICKS: sffan49 brought up a good point about the grades. If the 49ers have drafted so well why aren’t they better? I was thinking about this very thing last night while careening down the aisles at Safeway looking for pork chops. Here are the reasons:

1. Successful drafts should be measured greatly on the position as much or more than the player. A team can hit on inside linebackers (Patrick Willis) and sign safeties (Mark Roman, Michael Lewis) all day, but if they don’t hit at quarterback, tackle, defensive end, rush linebacker and cornerback, the team will probably struggle. Unlike baseball, football, with the grand exception of quarterback, is won on the edges, not up the middle.

The 49ers might have missed on Alex Smith. Jonas Jennings has been a disappointment at left tackle and Adam Snyder has been passable but not the answer as Jennings’ replacement. It seems everyone in the building, including Mike Martz, believes Joe Staley will be a terrific left tackle. We’ll see.

Tully Banta-Cain wasn’t the double-digit sack master the team hoped he would be, Manny Lawson hasn’t been that player either.

The 49ers have hit on cornerbacks. Walt Harris, even though he slipped this year, was a solid signing, and even though the team overpaid for Nate Clements, he has been worth it so far. But if they were able to draft cornerbacks, it would have been much less expensive.

2. The team was bereft of talent in 2005 when the Mike Nolan-Scot McCloughan regime arrived. Notice with the Patriots, all of the aforementioned players were drafted before the ’05 season. Bearnut said that every team has a fairly solid core of players. Not the 49ers in ’05, they were the most talentless team in the league by far.

In the six drafts of the Terry Donahue era, the team had two Pro Bowl players – Julian Peterson and a punter, Andy Lee. Only nine remain from those drafts and two (Justin Smiley and Kwame Harris) are going to free agency and probably to other teams.

The one glaring mistake Nolan and McCloughan made was not signing Peterson. Two years ago, they were emerging from their cap issues – they were $30 million under last year and $20 million under this year. They had the cake to re-sign Peterson, even though he played poorly in ’05.

While learning a new defense, Peterson lost his instincts. But another year in the system and he would have regained his All-Pro form. Nolan and McCloughan based their evaluation of him on his worst year. But that’s another story for another time. I have Senior Bowl practice tape to watch and pork chops to sear.